The Possession of Mr Cave

by Matt Haig

  I parked and waited, in view of both main entrances. It reached five past, ten past, quarter past, but you didn't leave. I had watched the brief rush of pupils and teachers depart within those first few minutes, but not you. Maybe I had got it wrong. Maybe I had missed you. Maybe there was another exit you could have gone through.

  I left the car and circuited the perimeter of the school on foot, to see if this could have been the case. There were no other obvious exits. Perhaps you had climbed over the fence. After all, you weren't allowed to leave the school premises. Yes. The fence was certainly low enough.

  The dull green grass of the hockey fields stretched out beyond the iron railing. Some boys from St John's walked by, on the other side of the road, and threw insults at me, as many as they could think of. I ignored them, raised my Second World War light infantry binoculars, and saw you sitting in the yard beyond the fields. You were on a bench, on your own. Where were your friends? I scanned across and saw Imogen, amid a menagerie of exotic-haired girls. You looked over at them, once or twice, but they refused to register your presence.

  I felt relief. You hadn't escaped school to meet Denny, and you were safe.

  Yet you looked so pathetic, as you sat there, pulling your hair forward and analysing its ends. I imagine I must have felt a certain pity as I watched you, alone. An island amid continents, amid the schoolyard empires of belonging. Yes, I must have felt sorry for you, but I have to confess the relief is much easier to recall. Maybe it had already happened. Perhaps he had told you it was all over. You weren't with him, that was the main thing. No, that was everything.

  I lowered the binoculars, and found you again. A delicate grey-green speck sinking, through my unfocused gaze, into the solid orange mass of the Victorian brickwork behind you.

  *

  and we were inside in the red blood warmth together you and me curled up inside the space you and me before we had names you and me before we knew there were any others in the world you and me before we knew there were an outside or an inside before we knew there was anything but you and me and the beat of our hearts we did not know were hearts and we were there for ever you and me the only life in the only world you and me so close we did not know there was any difference between you and me and we did not know it would ever change and that there would be the day the light would scream into our faces and we would be held apart sucking separate milk and see our separate makers and compete for their separate love in the light white world full of empty space where people have to fight and smile and scream to feel connected and I loved you and you loved me and we were still happy because the love had no name and we had no names that we knew we just knew sounds and the faces of me and you and the faces of the makers and one face out like a light it was just him with enough love inside just for one just for you and your unstained face and he gave us words this maker and the words were other things to separate us and the words kept growing like the distance between planet earth and all its people and the distance between you and me and the love and the hate he gave us and I wanted to be back in the time I couldn't remember in the blood red warmth or the shining dark of the life before when we were the same sweet nothing you and me you and me.

  *

  We were at Cynthia's, the following evening. You were sitting in her rosewood elbow chair, that beautiful antique outcast in that twig-filled bungalow. You were reading your grandmother's old copy of The Return of the Native directly under one of Cynthia's charcoal sketches of nude flesh.

  'I love that story,' she told you, a hand on her stomach. 'And your mother did too. I believe she read that same copy.'

  She was right. Your mother adored Hardy. Nature as symbol. Landscape as the rough divinity that shapes our ends. She was quite a Romantic in that sense, which possibly explains why she wanted to name our daughter after a wild hedgerow plant.

  'Have you read any of his others?' Cynthia asked you.

  'We're doing Tess,' you said, in your restored voice. 'At school.'

  'Ah, Tess,' Cynthia said, wistfully, as if talking of a friend she had known personally but who had passed away. 'Not one for a happy ending though, that was Hardy's trouble. A typical man. Wallowing in his own misery like a hippo in mud.' She gave me a sharp look at this point, which I chose to ignore.

  'Listen, Cynthia,' I said, holding up the carrier bag from the health-food store and placing it on that horrendous table. 'I've brought the supplements you asked for. Shall I show you? In the kitchen?' I bounced my eyebrows in such a fashion that she gathered I wanted a quiet word. We left you to Egdon Heath and went into the kitchen.

  'It's over,' I whispered, placing a jar of hawthorn tablets down on the unit. 'With her and that boy. It's all over.'

  She eyed my glee with suspicion. 'What did you do, Terence?'

  'Do?' I said, mock-insulted. 'I didn't do anything. I think she's finally seen sense that's all. Anyway, does it matter what's happened? It's over. It's over.'

  She closed her eyes. 'Poor girl. Is she upset? Has she said anything?'

  I felt as though Cynthia was missing the point. 'No. She hasn't. And I don't think she's upset, really. She seems quite her old self. You know what youngsters are like, it was probably just a phase.'

  'But, Terence, I don't understand. How do you knowit's over?'

  'Because it is,' I said.

  She winced in pain and held her stomach. 'So, what are you going to do now? What are you going to do when the next boy comes along? Are you going to lock her in a cupboard? Put her in a glass case and interview prospective suitors, like an old king?'

  'Oh, Cynthia, stop it!' I told her. 'If you knew what I knew about that boy you would be as relieved as I am.'

  The pain seemed to leave her. She inspected the dietary information on one of the jars I had bought. 'So, why don't you enlighten me? What was he like? Terence? Terence?'

  I was looking past her, to the magnets on the door of her fridge-freezer. You know the ones. The miscellaneous collection of words that you and Reuben always used to rearrange. Four of the magnets were together, an even line amid the chaotic jumble all around them.

  petal wants a horse

  'It doesn't matter,' I said. 'I'll tell you another time.'

  Again I was in your room. Again I had no idea of how I got there. Again you were lost in oblivious sleep. Again that withdrawing Keatsian urge.

  One difference, though: a pillow – my own – held in my hands.

  'Oh, Reuben,' I whispered, once I was back in my bed. 'What were you doing?'

  Stillness, broken only by the tick of the clock. I clenched my eyes closed and bit into the sheets, fighting back the unborn heat of your brother's guilty tears.

  It was the following Monday, wasn't it, when I was meant to go down to Horncastle? I had been reluctant to close the shop, but as Cynthia was still bent double from her operation, and as it seemed too much to ask George, I decided it was worth the gamble. After all, I hadn't made a significant Monday sale since the drop-leaf table I had parted with the day Reuben had died, and now I knew Denny was out of your life I had decided to try and restore a degree of normality. I didn't have a stand, this year, but it was still worth going to catch up with the competition, and bargain-hunt among the collectors' stalls.

  The plan was thwarted, though, due to the blackout I experienced on the motorway. I had only been on the road for ten minutes when, without the usual warning, time stuttered forward. One moment I was in the fast lane, trying to shorten the journey as much as possible (I was trusting you with lunch hours now, but still wanted to be back at those school gates for four o'clock). The next moment I was sliding diagonally across the road. Cars honked long and thudding elephant notes behind me, as I cut them up. A lorry driver leaned out of his window, waving an obscene gesture.

  'Stay back,' I pleaded, with your brother. 'Leave me alone.'

  I made it to the lay-by, parked and composed myself. I switched on the radio and Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' slowly restored my mind. A few steady
breaths and a decision was made. It was too dangerous to try and carry on with the journey. What if Reuben tried to take over the wheel again?

  No.

  I would drive the shorter distance home, and be attentive to any darkening of vision or strange cerebral sensations.

  Of course, nothing happened. I made it safely back, with the help of Beethoven and a quieter road. Now, having the full knowledge of time, I realise he had no further reason to interfere. I was heading home, as he wanted. Yes, as he wanted.

  I entered from the shop side but locked the door again. The truth is I was still feeling rather worried about what had happened on the motorway, and didn't want to weaken myself further by facing customers.

  Instead, I decided to reupholster the George IV mahogany dining chair I had been intending to repair for weeks. So I went into the back to fetch my scissors and ripping chisel and, having found them, suddenly heard something from upstairs. Music. Faint, faint music. I stood still, for a while, because I was sure my ears were deceiving me. It was Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata', coming from upstairs. It was on your London Philharmonic album, I was sure, yet the truly peculiar thing was it was the precise same part I had heard on the car radio. The beautiful lament that comes towards the end of the first movement, that 'tender poetry beyond all language' as Berlioz put it.

  Maybe the radio had been left on upstairs, but if it was the radio why was it playing exactly the same refrain it had already played minutes before. With the chisel in my hand I trod my way carefully upstairs. Halfway up I wondered about returning to the shop and fetching the pistol, but I dismissed the idea. After all, why would an intruder be playing Beethoven?

  Outside your door, I waited. I heard something above the soft piano – a slow and rhythmic thudding. Most curious, given that I knew the piece was devoid of a percussion section.

  'Bryony? Bryony? Is that you? Petal?' You didn't answer, so I called you again, 'Bryony? Are you there?'

  Maybe this was just another delusion. Another aural hallucination. After what had happened in the car, it couldn't be ruled out. I leaned my ear against the door and heard nothing now but the dying moments of the first movement.

  Adagio sostenuto.

  Of course, you know what happened next. With the chisel in my left hand I opened the door with my right. I saw you there, just you, on the bed. Your tender body clothed in only the sheets.

  A second later I scanned left and he came into view, already in his jeans, pulling a white T-shirt over the rest of him.

  Denny.

  I kept blinking him away, but he was still there: this sweating animal, this predator inside my own home. He looked at the chisel in my hand and wondered what I was capable of. I stepped closer.

  'What have you done to her?' I asked, but I could see the answer all around me. Hear it, smell it.

  'Nothing,' he lied, addressing the chisel. 'We were doing nothing.'

  I stepped closer towards him and kept my eyes fixed on his face. 'You made a promise,' I said. 'I gave you –'

  I couldn't say it. I couldn't let you know what I had done, not then.

  'Dad, stop it,' you said. 'It's my fault. It wasn't Denny, it was me. Please, Dad, you're scaring me. Please.'

  The second movement began. Those strange, unsettling, opening bars intensifying the mood.

  'Nothing,' I said, picking up on Denny's word. 'That's all she is to you, isn't it?'

  'No,' he said. 'No, she's not, she's –'

  'Shut up. Jesus Christ, shut up!'

  'Dad, please.'

  What was I going to do? I had no idea. In truth, I wasn't thinking. I just kept conjuring pictures of him, on top of you, a scene that should have been beyond my worst imagining.

  'Do you think, Petal, that you can heal a boy like this with music? Do you think, Petal, that you can take this lump of stone and turn it into something more dignified? More worthy of your own nature? Well, you can't. Look at him. There's nothing there.'

  I wasn't looking at you. It was impossible to look at you. Instead, I was looking at the quiet fury in his eyes, as my own anger began to dissolve. An image flashed in my mind. Not of him and you in bed but of something else. I saw him fighting another boy, with a face I couldn't see. There were toys strewn on a carpet. It was a flash, nothing more, but it triggered a sudden weakening of my will. My body stood there, a hollow object, and the chisel dropped by my feet.

  *

  The room crept slowly out of the darkness, like an old layer of paint under a blowtorch, and both of you were gone.

  I telephoned your school. You were there. You had arrived late, at half past ten. Apparently you had told them your grandmother had just been taken into hospital.

  The lies were so easy for you now. So natural. You could shed the truth at any given moment, as easy as slipping unwanted clothes.

  A day of empty, monotonous horror and then the return journey from school.

  We said nothing of what had happened. Indeed, we said nothing at all. I felt you looking at me from the back seat. You were clearly suspicious of the silence, but didn't question it. We were both lost in our own plans, formulating the secret and opposing schemes we thought would set us free.

  and I was inside his head and I was pressing all the lights keeping them all pressed all the time as I looked out of the windows that weren't windows and down at you and it was so hard pressing all the lights that I could hardly hold on inside there but when he steadied I looked at you down from the watchtower and saw you lying there and saw you PLEASE GO no I saw you and I saw through your unhatched eyes the dream of you STOP and I saw you and you saw the time we went for tamsy beetles little green tamsies and you saw and the lights kept flashing but I kept smoking them out and you remembered STRENGTH you remembered when he wasn't looking at us when he had his back in front of us and I grabbed your mouth and you bit my hand REUB and I pushed you and I left you on the nettles and I felt the hundred EN stings you felt trying to get out and he saw and you told on me like the green goody grass you always were and I felt him smack me and I felt the pinkness and the shame of your bite and your bites he made me look at and the sadness when he put the penicillin on you and the smell of pink milk back when we were home LEAVE ME and the lights kept shining and I kept looking behind his eyes and raised his hands and walked slow towards your bed and I was so close from making it happen so close to freeing you from his love but I stopped and lost the power to stay inside the solid tower of him and the lights got brighter and brighter white as the sun like the lights that shine now and the hands fell by his side and he stood still as I left him as the light burned me out of the lies and into the truth and speeding me fast around the earth getting so foggy all the time and I couldn't get back couldn't find his light LEAVE ME and I went again to the place I go now without you ALONE

  Through the whispered crackle of the baby monitor, I heard you speak to him on your mobile telephone. You were planning to see him. You were meeting him at the shed at Rawcliffe Meadows and you were going to run away that night. Rawcliffe Meadows! Rawcliffe Meadows! Oh, Aristotle himself would have grimaced at such pathos. Rawcliffe Meadows. Where I had once taken you and your brother to hunt for tansy beetles. Was that your idea, to meet there? I didn't know. I didn't know where you were planning to go next. Maybe you were intending to stay hidden in the wild, catching rabbits and fishing for polluted carp in the river. I didn't know. All I knew was the time and the place.

  You stopped talking. You opened your door.

  'Bryony?'

  Your feet stopped, but your mouth said nothing.

  'Bryony? Petal? Is that you?' Ridiculous question, unanswered.

  I went out of my room and saw you. 'What do you think you're doing?'

  'I'm going out,' you told me. 'And you can't stop me.'

  'No,' I said. 'No, you're not.'

  'Dad? What are you doing? Get out of the way!'

  I shook my head and stretched my arms out. A makeshift crucifix, blocking your path. 'I'm sorry, Bryo
ny, but you are not yourself. And until such a time has arrived when I am confident that Bryony is Bryony again then I am very much afraid to say that your actions are under my command. You do understand that this is for your own good, don't you? You do know that the most irresponsible thing for me to do right now would be to let you walk out of this house? You do know that I can't let you see him, don't you? That animal.'

  'What?'

  'That animal. Denny. I can't let you see him. Not after what I saw in your bedroom.'

  'What are you on about? I'm going to Imogen's.'

  'Stop that,' I told you. 'Stop those lies.'

  'I'm not lying.'

  'You're not going to Imogen's and you know it. You're not friends with Imogen any more.'

  Was it then you pushed past me and reached for the door? Was it then I took your mobile telephone out of your pocket? Was it then I grabbed your arm and pulled you upstairs towards the attic, while you screamed like a banshee. You scratched my arm, do you remember, as we climbed the last few stairs? You even pulled my hair, causing me to treat you more roughly than I would have intended, and I apologise for that.

  'What are you doing?' You spat the words. 'Where are you going?'

  'Never mind where I am going,' I told you. 'The important thing is you are not going anywhere.'

  You looked at me in disbelief. 'You can't lock me in the attic, you Nazi psycho.'

  'I assure you I can and I will.'

  'That's abuse. That's illegal. You're mad. You need a hospital.'

  'It's for your own protection.'

  'I hate you,' you said and I know you meant it. Your mouth, your eyes, and your kicking legs – you all meant it.

  I pushed you back. 'I'm sorry, Bryony.' And then I locked you inside there, amid the old boxes and your mother's and Reuben's belongings.

  Your feet and hands thundered against the door. 'Let me out! Let me out! Fascist!' I must confess I feared you then, feared this force inside you, as people fear the most violent and unpredictable weather. Yet it was my only choice, and I had a new courage in my actions. The door would hold. The thick Tudor oak would take its beating, and the iron lock wouldn't give. Closing my eyes, I placed the key in my pocket, and let it be.